


La Muse Malade

by duh_i_read (duh_i_write)



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Crimes, Ficlet, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-20
Updated: 2010-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/95993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duh_i_write/pseuds/duh_i_read
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My poor Muse, alas! what ails you today? /Your hollow eyes are full of nocturnal visions."</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Muse Malade

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [La Muse Malade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/736478) by [krapivka37](https://archiveofourown.org/users/krapivka37/pseuds/krapivka37)



> Title and summery taken from Baudelaire's "The Sick Muse". Written for a Whedonland pre-series Dollhouse challenge and first place winner.

  
Carl William Craft is an artist. Everybody agrees. His parents. His teachers. His whiskey drinking loft dwelling friends.

He is a craftsman of human darkness: segmented faces, bisected bodies, long curved lines with twenty shades of red. When he sees the look on people's faces when they stand before his paintings, looks of revision and fascination, Carl is filled with a joy that twists under his skin and spreads across his nerves.

One autumn, his creativity wanes. His friends scatter. The canvas remains empty. Mocking him.

Blank cloth is too still. Carl yearns for a different medium. Touches himself in the night dreaming of it. Obsesses over it. Like a good artist, he follows his instincts. Gathers the tools of the trade in a leather bag and searches for his next subject.

There is party no one invited him to, hosted by a women he remembers from his last gallery show. It is easy to coax her into his car, drunk as she is. No one notices as he takes her to his new studio.

It is a quiet place. Plenty of room to work. Carl waits for her to wake up before he begins. Strung on a low hanging pipe, the rope around her wrists is stained with sweat and blood. He cuts away her clothes, studies her form.

She will be his finest masterpiece. No longer a quiet place, he ignores her cries as they echo around them. He picks up a knife. The old joy twists in him, stronger then before. Carl graces his living canvas with one long stroke.


End file.
